Solzhenitsyn Castigates Russia's Lawmakers

By STEVEN ERLANGER,

Published: October 29, 1994

MOSCOW, Oct. 28—
In a searing lecture to Russia's Parliament, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn today appealed to those in power to worry less about their privileges and care more about the suffering of ordinary Russians, confused by so much change.

In his thin, reedy voice, standing at a lectern bearing the czarist double-headed eagle, the writer and historian tried to take to the legislators the cares and concerns of the people he had met on his long train ride across Russia, after he returned home in May from 20 years' exile in the United States.

"Having visited many of Russia's regions, having met with hundreds of people and having received thousands of letters," he said, "I have an impression our population is discouraged, that people are stupefied, in shock from their humiliation and shame because of their weakness. People doubt that the Government's policy and reforms are in the interests of the people."

His long beard lent Mr. Solzhenitsyn, 75, the aspect of a religious figure from an icon. He struck themes he has sounded before, but this unusual appearance -- his first official speech since returning to Russia -- nonetheless had the feeling of an important occasion.

He said freedom had not brought Russia true democracy, only the persistence of an expanded, selfish, suffocating bureaucracy now "repainted" in democratic colors. "This is not a democracy, but an oligarchy -- rule by the few," he said.

Some of the lawmakers, who were polite but restless in the hall, broke into applause at that point. But mostly there was silence, with some muttering and some visible exits by politicians going out for a smoke.

"Power is not about getting things and not about pride, but about duty and obligations," Mr. Solzhenitsyn said, castigating the legislative and executive branches as bad examples.

Ordinary Russians remain alienated from power, he said, "indifferent to Moscow's politics and parties." For all the talk about crime-fighting, he said, Parliament has not passed a new civil or criminal code.

He called, as he has before, for intensified local democracy through the restoration of pre-Revolutionary local councils. He said he had told Russians he had met that they must begin to change politics at the local level, voting for people they knew, "whom they can look in the face."

He always knew the emergence of Russia from the long disease of Communism would be painful, he said, but he declared that Russian leaders had taken "the most twisted, painful and awkward path."

These are all themes Mr. Solzhenitsyn has touched on regularly since his return, in television appearances and articles that have aroused surprisingly little interest, given his moral authority as not only a victim of Stalin's Gulag and crimes, but also their finest historian.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn takes an ethnocentric view of history, and today he called for better privileges for Russians living in the former states of the Soviet Union, for stricter laws against foreigners' living in and buying property in Russia, for the abandonment by Moscow of Central Asia and the Caucasus to the Muslim world and for the creation of a Slavic state combining Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, or at least its northern half, which has a large Russian population.

He also repeated his criticism of the use of foreign currency in Russia and the purchase of foreign grain, and the sale of farmland. "Auction sales of land to the nouveau riche mean the sale of Russia itself," he said.

He spoke for an hour. When he closed, with a call for a speedier advance toward real democracy, there was a smattering of applause, but no more.

Photo: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, in an emotional moment of his speech before the Russian Parliament. (Associated Press)